When Heath Ledger was preparing to play the Joker in The Dark Knight, he locked himself in a hotel room for a month and put together a diary of inspirations for the role. Here’s a tantalizing glimpse at that diary, from a French documentary

“”I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary” – Heath Ledger on his preparation for The Joker role in Christopher Nolan’s THE DARK KNIGHT.

Extract from the documentary “Too Young To Die”. Kim Ledger, his father, speaks.

TRANSLATION:

“This is the Joker’s diary.

In order to inhabit his﻿ character, he (Heath) locked himself up in a hotel room for weeks.

He would do that. He liked to dive into his characters, but this time he really took it up a notch.”

“The hospital scene is interesting because when he was a kid, his sister Kate liked to dress him up as a nurse. He was really funny like that. He also was in the movie.

This is a make-up﻿ test which was done eight months before. Before the end of the shooting he wrote “bye bye” on the back of the page. It was hard to see this.'”